Wednesday, July 12, 2017

"Summer Replacement - Part Three"

A while back I had an
accountant who was a member of a tennis club that hosted the “Virginia Slims
Women’s Tennis Tournament.”It was there
I was the sister phenoms, Venus and Serena Williams, play as promising and
riveting young teenagers.

It was fun saying, “I
watched them on their way up and saw their incredible potential.”

I offer you the
similar thrill of catching a promising writer on his way up.

Ladies and gentlemen,
my vacation summer replacement:

Samuel “Mark Twain”
Clemens.

Keep your eye on this
guy.He’s a definite “comer.”

BILLIARDS

I wonder why a man should prefer a good billiard table to a
poor one; and why he should prefer straight cues to crooked ones; and why he
should prefer round balls to chipped ones; and why he should prefer a level
table to one that slants; and why he should prefer responsive cushions to the
dull and unresponsive kind.

I wonder at these things, because when we examine the matter
we find that the essentials involved in billiards are as competently and
exhaustively furnished by a bad billiard outfit as they are by the best
one.

One of the essentials is amusement.Very well, if there is any more amusement to
be gotten out of the one outfit than out of the other, the facts are in favor
of the bad outfit.The bad outfit will
always furnish thirty per cent more fun for the players and for the spectators
than will the good outfit.

Another essential of the game is that the outfit shall give
the players full opportunity to exercise their best skill, and display it in a
way to compel the admiration of the spectators.Very well, the bad outfit is nothing behind the good one in this regard.It is a difficult matter to estimate
correctly the eccentricities of chipped balls and a slanting table, and make
the right allowance for them and secure a count; the finest kind of skill is
required to accomplish the satisfactory result.

Another essential to the game is that it shall add to the
interest of the game by furnishing opportunities to bet.Very well, in this regard no good outfit can
claim any advantage over a bad one.

I know, by experience, that a bad outfit is as valuable as
the best one; that an outfit that couldn’t be sold at auction for seven dollars
is just as valuable for all the essentials of the game as an outfit that is
worth a thousand.

Last winter, here in New York, I saw Hoppe and Schaefer and
Sutton and the three or four other billiard champions of world-wide fame contend
against each other, and certainly the art and science displayed were a wonder
to see; yet I saw nothing there in the way of science and art that was more
wonderful than shots which I had seen Texas Tom make on the wavy surface of
that poor old wreck in the perishing saloon at Jackass Gulch forty years
before.